This corresponds well with the statement made by Proclus, that the pyramids of Egypt, which, according to Diodorus Siculus, had been in existence during 3600 years, terminated in a platform upon which the priests made their celestial observations. The last-named historian alleges, also (Biblioth. Hist. Lib. I.), that the Egyptians, who claimed to be the most ancient of men, professed to be acquainted with the situation of the earth, the risings and settings of stars, to have arranged the order of days and months, and pretended to be able to predict future events, with certainty, from their observations of celestial phenomena. I think that it is in this association of astrology with astronomy that we find the explanation of what, after all, remains the great mystery of the pyramid--the fact, namely, that all the passages, ascending, descending, and horizontal, constructed with such extreme care, and at the cost of so much labour, in the interior of the great pyramid, were eventually (perhaps not very long after their construction) to be closed up. I reject utterly the idea that they could have been constructed merely as memorials. Sir E. Beckett, who seems willing to admit this conception, rejects the notion that the builders of the pyramid recorded "standard measures by hiding them with the utmost ingenuity." Is it not equally absurd to imagine that they recorded the date of the great pyramid, by construction, by those most elaborately concealed passages? Why they should have concealed them after constructing them so carefully, may not be clear. For my own part, I regard the theory that the Pyramid of Suphis was built for astrological observations, relating to the life of that monarch only, as affording the most satisfactory explanation yet advanced of the mysterious circumstance that the building was closed up after his death. Supposing the part of the edifice (fifty layers in all), which includes the ascending and descending passages, to have been erected during his lifetime, it may be that some reverential or superstitious feeling caused his successors, or the priesthood, to regard the building as sacred after his death--to be closed up therefore and completed as a perfect pyramid, polished _ad unguem_ from its pointed summit to the lines along which the four faces met the smooth pavement round its base. We might thus explain why each monarch required his own astrological observatory afterwards to become his tomb. Be this as it may, it is certain that the pyramids were constructed for astronomical observations; and it would, I conceive, be utterly unreasonable to imagine that the costly interior fittings and arrangements, "not inferior, in respect of curiosity of art or richness of materials, to the most sumptuous and magnificent buildings," were intended to subserve no other purpose but to be memorials; and that, too, not until, in the course of thousands of years, the whole mass of the pyramid had begun to